Accepting Life's Unplanned Setbacks: The Reason You Can't Simply Click 'Undo'

I hope you had a enjoyable summer: my experience was different. On the day we were supposed to be go on holiday, I was waiting at A&E with my husband, expecting him to have urgent but routine surgery, which caused our travel plans were forced to be cancelled.

From this episode I gained insight significant, all over again, about how challenging it is for me to experience sadness when things go wrong. I’m not talking about major catastrophes, but the more everyday, subtly crushing disappointments that – without the ability to actually experience them – will significantly depress us.

When we were expected to be on holiday but were not, I kept experiencing a pull towards seeking optimism: “I can {book a replacement trip|schedule another vacation|arrange a different getaway”; “At least we have {travel insurance|coverage for trips|protection for journeys”; “This’ll give me {something to write about|material for an article|content for a story”. But I never felt better, just a bit down. And then I would confront the reality that this holiday was permanently lost: my husband’s surgery necessitated frequent painful bandage replacements, and there is a limited time window for an relaxing trip on the shores of Belgium. So, no vacation. Just discontent and annoyance, hurt and nurturing.

I know more serious issues can happen, it's merely a vacation, what a privileged problem to have – I know because I used that reasoning too. But what I required was to be sincere with my feelings. In those times when I was able to halt battling the disappointment and we discussed it instead, it felt like we were facing it as a team. Instead of being down and trying to smile, I’ve allowed myself all sorts of unpleasant emotions, including but not limited to bitterness and resentment and loathing and fury, which at least seemed authentic. At times, it even turned out to appreciate our moments at home together.

This recalled of a desire I sometimes see in my therapy clients, and that I have also witnessed in myself as a patient in psychoanalysis: that therapy could in some way reverse our unwanted experiences, like clicking “undo”. But that arrow only goes in reverse. Confronting the reality that this is not possible and accepting the grief and rage for things not happening how we anticipated, rather than a insincere positive spin, can facilitate a change of current: from avoidance and sadness, to development and opportunity. Over time – and, of course, it does take time – this can be life-changing.

We consider depression as experiencing negativity – but to my mind it’s a kind of deadening of all emotions, a suppressing of anger and sadness and disappointment and joy and life force, and all the rest. The alternative to depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of genuine feeling freedom and release.

I have often found myself caught in this wish to reverse things, but my young child is assisting me in moving past it. As a new mother, I was at times burdened by the incredible needs of my infant. Not only the nourishing – sometimes for over an hour at a time, and then again under 60 minutes after that – and not only the outfit alterations, and then the repeating the process before you’ve even completed the task you were handling. These day-to-day precious tasks among so many others – functionality combined with nurturing – are a reassurance and a tremendous privilege. Though they’re also, at moments, relentless and draining. What surprised me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the feelings requirements.

I had assumed my most important job as a mother was to satisfy my child's demands. But I soon came to realise that it was not possible to meet all of my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her craving could seem endless; my supply could not be produced rapidly, or it came too fast. And then we needed to change her – but she disliked being changed, and wept as if she were descending into a gloomy abyss of despair. And while sometimes she seemed comforted by the embraces we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were lost to us, that no comfort we gave could aid.

I soon discovered that my most crucial role as a mother was first to persevere, and then to assist her process the intense emotions caused by the impossibility of my shielding her from all discomfort. As she grew her ability to take in and digest milk, she also had to develop a capacity to digest her emotions and her suffering when the milk didn’t come, or when she was in pain, or any other challenging and perplexing experience – and I had to develop alongside her (and my) irritation, anger, hopelessness, loathing, discontent, need. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to support in creating understanding to her emotional experience of things not working out ideally.

This was the contrast, for her, between being with someone who was attempting to provide her only good feelings, and instead being assisted in developing a skill to experience all feelings. It was the contrast, for me, between wanting to feel wonderful about doing a perfect job as a flawless caregiver, and instead developing the capacity to accept my own imperfections in order to do a good enough job – and understand my daughter’s disappointment and anger with me. The difference between my attempting to halt her crying, and understanding when she required to weep.

Now that we have developed beyond this together, I feel not as strongly the urge to hit “undo” and rewrite our story into one where things are ideal. I find hope in my sense of a ability growing inside me to recognise that this is not possible, and to realize that, when I’m occupied with attempting to reschedule a vacation, what I actually want is to weep.